Email Marketing Metrics Report

Introduction

Background

As a decades-old communications medium, email has seen its fair share of competitors — text messages, instant messaging, and social media platforms to name a few. Nevertheless, it remains a popular tool for communicating in both the personal and business arena. In fact, year after year, email outperforms other marketing channels.

As was the case in 2012, email continued to prosper in 2013. According to the Direct Marketing Association's 2013 Statistical Fact Book, email campaigns had a staggering 4,300% ROI and earned $42.08 for every dollar spent on them i. A joint Adestra/Econsultancy report revealed a similar statistic, namely that revenue from email experienced a proportionate growth of 28% ii. Business owners ranked email marketing as the best channel for ROI in 2013, and attributed an average 23% of their total sales to it.

As expected, mobile email advanced dramatically last year. It claimed the majority of the opens in 2013, and closed the year with 51% of all opens iii. This was in line with the growth of global mobile data traffic, which jumped 81% last year. Analysts at Cisco expect this trend to further cement itself in the next few years. They predicted an 11-fold rise in global mobile data traffic by 2018 iv.

These statistics, coupled with the advent of mobile payment platforms such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet, highlight the increasing reliance on mobile devices. Yet, only 47% of marketers reported having optimized their emails for mobile, while 61% admitted having a "non-existent" or "basic" strategy for mobile ii.

Last year was hailed as the year of marketing automation vii. With a majority of top-performing companies now using automation, this strategy has already been acknowledged as an excellent revenue generator viii. According to the 2013 Lead-Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study, 78% of surveyed marketers said that automation systems were "highly effective and efficient" in improving the revenue contributions coming from their content ix.

At the heart of automation lies the basic premise of a data-driven predictive model x. According to BlueKai, data-driven marketing experienced a 227% increase during H1 of 2013 xi. Of all the marketing channels, data collection influenced email the most, with 72% of respondents reporting that data and audience information affected their email delivery. Email marketing continues to shift towards this data-driven, customer-first approach.

Purpose

MailerMailer uses the findings revealed in this report, along with the relevant trends and benchmark statistics, to draw its own conclusions about the state of the email marketing industry.

Methods

Data from over 62,000 newsletter campaigns served as the basis for this report. These campaigns consisted of approximately 1.18 billion email messages sent between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2013. When compiling metrics about click rates, MailerMailer disregarded emails with no links. Subject lines with fewer than four characters were similarly removed from the statistics. Additionally, this report only used information from customers with 25 or more list members.

The 34 industry classifications in this study were assigned to MailerMailer clients based on the nature of their businesses. For example, MailerMailer would place a clothing store in the Fashion and Beauty category, a toy shop in the Hobbies category, and a university in the Education category.